1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a flat display panel and, more particularly, to a liquid crystal display panel and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A liquid crystal display panel includes a first substrate, a second substrate, and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the two substrates. In the liquid crystal display panel, field-generating electrodes may be provided on the light-incident side of the first or second substrates. Alternatively, field-generating electrodes may be provided on both substrates.
A distance, that is, a cell gap, between the first and second substrates of a liquid crystal display panel may be uniformly maintained by a cell gap maintaining member. For example, a bead spacer can be used as the cell gap maintaining member, which may result in undesirable light leakage as a result of the random distribution of the beads in a space defined by the two substrates. Recently, a column or pillar-shaped spacer, which may be uniformly distributed throughout one of the two substrates, has been used as the cell gap maintaining member.
To maintain the cell gap of a conventional liquid crystal display panel using the column spacer, a liquid crystal dispensing process may be performed. According to the liquid crystal dispensing process, the first and second substrates are connected to each other after applying droplets of liquid crystals onto the first substrate or the second substrate. However, liquid crystal droplets may not be uniformly dispersed on the first or second substrate due to the column spacer, which may lower a dispensing process margin. To enhance a dispensing process margin, a method of reducing the dimensions of a column spacer has been suggested.
However, reducing the dimensions of the column spacer may result in a smear failure, which is cell gap non-uniformity due to an external stress applied to a liquid crystal display panel.